The Art Of Travel: Alain de Botton Interview

Why *This* Isn't Actually What You Want Out Of Your World Travels

You know your mate who quit his job to travel for a year? Or those friends on summer holidays sprawled out on sun loungers with pina coladas - while you’re stuck behind a screen? It’s a darn bitch to watch, isn’t it?

Well you may be surprised to find out that over half of those smug bastards are faking it: A new survey found that actually, almost two thirds of people are disappointed with their holidays.

Hard to believe, when all most people (50% of respondents) want from travel is to have fun and feel rested (49%); clearly that’s harder than it seems. “Travel is a lot like love,” philosopher and author Alain de Botton told us. “We expect a lot out of them and they can be greatly disappointing.”

The problem, de Botton, says, is that we’ve got unrealistic expectations that external things can fulfill psychological needs. For example, if you’re in need of calm, or stressed at your job and need a change of pace, you head to a quiet island, right? Not necessarily, he says.

“The sunshine holiday tends to be a most acute version of that mismatch because what you want is a resolution to all kinds of tensions, which the destination just can’t answer to. The destination just doesn’t have any of the things that you’re looking for from it, it just has a very visually pleasing outer form that has no connection.”

Before you stop reading, he’s not about to tell you to go sit on a rock and meditate. He’s saying, whether what you want from a holiday is pure irresponsible fun or sexual adventure, you should make sure you know how to get what you’re after so you’re not disappointed.

We interviewed de Botton, whose book The New Art Of Travel by Airbnb and Penguin Books, on sale now, to find out how.

Know What You Want

While it's tempting to think a gap year or even a short holiday can answer life's major questions or iron out a bunch of stress in your life, you may end up with little more than a bucket load full of facial hair. And maybe a tattoo.

What will really help you to achieve what you want out of travel is narrowing down your focus.

"I do think that travel can be part of a journey of inner maturation but you’ve got to do it right... It’s about being realistic about what the change in the external environment can do to the change in the internal environment," de Botton says. "And I think a lot of it is having the wrong expectations; you’re just placing unrealistic hopes on a change in the external environment. It’s not that it can’t do anything but it can only do so much. And also the more you know what it is really that you want from it, the more of a chance you’ve got at getting it."

So if you're the guy who's repressed a deep desire to be an architect because your mum always wanted you to be a lawyer, and now you're stuck at some firm working 12-hour days, a sun holiday likely won't address the more deep seated issues there. "A trip to Southeast Asia won’t really solve that because it’s not really linked to that," advises de Botton. "Maybe you need to do some kind of trip; maybe you should travel and try and build a building. But we just need to [have more of] a sense of direction."

Write It All Down

Sometimes the hardest place to start is all over again. So go grab yourself a pint (no, not three), sit down and get serious about what you want. Here's how:

"One should start by writing down all the things, all the issues in one’s life. We’ve all got issues like ‘I don’t’ have enough time’ or ‘my relationship’s fractious’ or ‘I’m not learning enough any more’ or whatever," suggests de Botton. "So write all those things down and then write down a list of destinations. It can be very vague, like ‘I want to go to India’. And then you kind of try to break down those destinations until really what you get is a good fit between the issues in your life and how the journey might be used to address them."

We're not saying we're worried about you coming into the office looking like you're about to lose it... but a relaxing holiday detox programme might just sort you out.

Take Your Needs Seriously

Not everything has to be about relaxing from our crazy stressful lives, though. Maybe what you want isn't a detox. Maybe it's to slam shots of tequila down you're throat till you can't stand and spend lots and lots of time grinding sloppily on the dance floor at Señor Frogs in Cancun. And that's cool. Really. But take that seriously, too.

"Meaning comes in all shapes and sizes," says de Botton. "I mean some people go ‘I need fun’, and fun is a really important thing. But what do they mean by that? Like maybe they mean irresponsibility or maybe they need a sexual adventure or something. Those are serious things too. Those are part of life. So I’m not saying meaning has to be sitting down on a rock and contemplating your soul; it could be all kinds of things. But [if you're looking for fun] take that really seriously. To the point where you might realise that actually the [beach] is not necessarily going to get you to the place you want to go if the goal is [fun]."

Have Big Ambitions But Specific Focus

The number one issue with travel today, according to de Botton? It's too easy. So easy, in fact, we hardly think before we click.

"I often think that travel has become so fatefully easy where we book without thinking what we’re trying to get out of it," says de Botton. "I think we should look at travel as a kind of modern pilgrimage. And by that I mean that we should set out on our journeys with really big ambitions about what the journey could do for us. Maybe it will be a springboard to a new face of a relationship or to a new step in a career or to a new kind of bond with one’s children or whatever it is."

Maybe that sounds like too much to ask from a simple week off work or a gap year that's supposed to be pure spontaneity. But next time you're about to drop £40 on that airfare deal to Shagaluf, think about what you really want out of it – and you just may get it.

"In many ways this book is a kind of call to be a little bit more focused, more demanding, about what we want from our journeys so that our journeys do deliver on the extraordinary hopes that I think we do have in them."

Meet People

No, we're not talking about the French gamine who taught you Faire un partie des jambes en l’air (literally, “an up in the air legs match”). Though, if that happened, we're jealous. But digging deeper...

"One of the fantasies when you travel is to appropriate another culture in a personal way," says de Botton. "The people are such a deep part of the desire to travel because really what you want is to be transformed by a journey and transformed by a culture and that culture exists in people– and so it’s through meeting local people ultimately rather than just through books or works of art that it’s going to happen."

We wholeheartedly suggest repressing that British stuffiness we're all known for abroad (well, that and being culturally insensitive brags) and getting involved with the locals.

Get Perspective

Sure, life in the UK can be a drag what with the 11.5 months of grey in the year. But, at the risk of sounding cliche, it's easy to forget how nice it is to be able to pop into Costa for that flat white for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up.

"Countries have got things that we need, and it may be quite unexpected things. One of the things that most of us are really in danger of forgetting is appreciating our lives," says de Botton. "And there’s this weird bias ... that we always think that what we’ve got to try and do is to expose ourselves to greater luxury, to circumstances that are more luxurious than those we know from our own homes. But anyone’s who’s done any kind of travel in what we call the developing world very quickly returns thinking ‘Ohmygod, I had no idea’. I spent some time in Uganda last year and there are things I saw on that trip that put things permanently in perspective."

If you're in need of some perspective, there's lots of places to give you a good kick in the bum right about now.

Volunteer

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Does feeding Syrian refugees in Kos sound like an ideal holiday? No. Not to us, either.

Surprisingly, though, this kind of thing might actually make you happier than laying on a sun lounger.

"People are exhausted, they want to go on a holiday, and the last thing they want to do is meet a Syrian refugee and help to bring them basic food and water. You think ‘what on Earth is that?! That’s not a holiday!’" says de Botton. "And yet weirdly, I saw this report where people said 'That was one of the most interesting and eye opening holidays of my life'... We don’t have a place for that in our heads."

Whether you're interested in making a place for it or not, it's certainly food for thought.

Screw The Museum

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Sometimes, when you could really use a dose of stimulation, you put down the pint and head to a museum – that'll surely do it, right? Wrong.

"Museums are all about the things that artists liked but the things that artists tend to like is life," laughs de Botton. "Artists might not have spent a lot of time in a museum, they probably would have gone out to the field."

Put Down The Phone

Before you sigh grumpily about another lecture on how technology's ruining young people today, listen up: de Botton isn't saying don't use your phone. He's just saying, you know, maybe put it away for an hour or so.

"We know that there’s something a bit sick about being thousands of miles from home and actually weirdly being quite keen to just check Instagram… but it’s really hard," he admits. "But the ability to be permanently connected flattens experiences that depend on the disconnection from the ordinary to work their power. Being constantly drawn back to the familiar through our phones is a serious menace," he says. His advice? "Go easy on ourselves… On the first day, try an hour without it, etc."

Grow

OK, OK. So even if you've read all of this and you think 'I don't need this. When I want to have fun I go to Barcelona for the weekend and lay in the sun and drink and that makes me happy so jog ON", we applaud you. You know what you want, and you clearly know how to get it.

We don't all travel in search of a higher meaning. But if you do, or if you're planning to, let de Botton explain some of the psychology behind it.

"I think the best possible, highest ambition we could we could bring to a journey is to use another culture as part of your own evolution. Because just like every other person, we’ve all got bits missing from us and the most satisfying relationships with other people are times when we can find someone whose got something that we need that’s psychological. And I think the same thing’s true for a countries – countries have got things that we need."